She looked at Simmons. They had dressed his wound with the medical kit Morrigan carried in his car and bound his hands with zip ties. He rested his weary and pale bald head against the window inside the passenger’s side of Morrigan’s car.
“I’m surprised you didn’t kill him,” Bukowski said.
A nod. “Yeah,” Morrigan said. “Me either.” He pulled his cigarettes, lit one, and puffed away. “This is a nightmare. This is… this is insane.”
“What are you going to do? Klein was expecting you to kill this guy.”
“We’ll have to stage something. I can’t kill Simmons. He knows too much.”
“That’s obviously why they wanted him dead in the first place.”
“Most likely. Between that girl that he killed and the rest of it.”
Bukowski threw Simmons a look. “He needs to burn for this. They all need to.”
Morrigan puffed. “And they will,” he said. “But we have to do this the right way. This isn’t over yet. It’s only just beginning.”
Bukowski checked her watch. “You’re running out of time,” she said. “Klein’s expecting the confirmation soon.”
“Haul him out,” Morrigan ordered.
Bukowski, roughly, pulled Simmons from the car. Herself and Morrigan then dropped him on his back on the sand.
“Now, Simmons, you piece of shit, you are going to play dead, can you do that?”
“Yes,” Simmons groaned.
“You any good at Halloween makeup Bukowski?”
“Not bad. I do it for my nephew every year. What you got?”
“I got some sachets of ketchup and barbecue sauce in the glove compartment.”
“For fuck sake, Morrigan, are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they will have to do, I suppose,” Bukowski sighed.
Three minutes later, Bukowski had created a fake bullet wound in the center of his forehead, using the sauces and a little bit of real blood from Simmons’s leg wound to make it look more legitimate.
“How’s it look?” Bukowski asked.
“Not bad.”
“Take a picture,” Bukowski ordered.
Morrigan used the burner and snapped off several photos. They picked the one that looked the most convincing. Between the pale and shocked state that Simmons was in, photo number three looked like an all-too convincing death photo.
“I’m sending it,” Morrigan said as he shot the photo over to Klein.
One minute passed. Two. Finally, Klein responded with a text: Well done. Talk soon. I’ll send a photo of your brother in the morning.
“It worked,” Morrigan said with relief as he pocketed the cell. He nodded to Simmons. “Toss him in the car.”
“He needs medical attention.”
“Soon.”
Bukowski hauled Simmons to his feet, dragged him back to Morrigan’s car, and tossed him in the trunk. Herself and Morrigan then sat on a nearby bench, staring out at the waters as the gray of the early morning sky hung over their heads.
“We can’t turn back now, John,” Bukowski said.
He nodded. “I know.”
“This is only going to get worse before it gets better.”
“I know…”
“John, how is this going to end?”
Morrigan took his time answering. “It ends when we bring down Klein, Connolly, and any other motherfuckers involved.”
The pair continued to sit quietly to stare out to sea. Eventually Bukowski put her arm around Morrigan and broke the silence. “Come on, John, we better go before Simmons bleeds to death. I’ll take him to Doc Rickets. He will fix him up.”
“Sure… let’s go,” Morrigan said as he threw his cigarette on the sand. He walked to his car, nothing on his mind except justice and vengeance as he turned his back to the turbulent seas and loaded a fresh clip into his gun.
THE END
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